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Per Aspera Ad Astra

Two years ago today, the day after Hurricane Sandy in New York City, I left for Kennedy Space Center with a young web developer named Alexandra White for the #NASASocial #Atlantis transfer. With half of New York City’s power grid out of commission, flooding, and fuel shortage, it was against odds, but with assistance from the staffs at Budget Rental Cars and Delta Airlines that we both made it to Philadelphia Airport in time to catch a flight out to Kennedy Space Center to close out the U.S. Space Shuttle program. It was Mission Impossible.

The photo on my Twitter profile is of Space Shuttle #Atlantis that I took with #NASASocial as it was being rolled from the NASA Kennedy’s VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building) and to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, the last of the space shuttles to transfer over to public hands. Since that time, I have forged many relationships in aerospace from NASA, ESA, JAXA, and the private commercial space industry. It is a small reminder of the efforts that it takes to make the impossible happen. It is not a zero-sum game but combined collectively across many groups of individuals and spanning beyond borders for science and humanity. This week has been a grueling one, taxing on hope.

In these moments of fear, despair, and darkness, America, the world, needs hope and nothing more has inspired the imaginations of generations than Apollo, the lunar landing, and the space shuttles program. We now have experiments in board the ISS (International Space Station) conducted by global collaborations, Robotics, Mars Curiosity exploring on our neighboring planet, Rosetta chasing a comet and detailing its journey towards the sun, the development of the James Webb telescope and its mission to span space in the complete opposite direction of the sun from the Hubble Telescope, exploration of the origins of the universe at the LHC in CERN, energy sources and data computing, weather and climate change missions here on our home planet to name a few.

The value chain is long, costly, risky, and unclear, but now we have partners across the globe invested in long-term #science and exploration. The collective abilities, talent, capacity, potential and capital is higher than before. But, do not forget the sacrifices of the past or what has occurred this week. Nor lest we forget risks and challenges of the future in commercial space flight and exploration and why we need to continue. #PerAsperaAdAstra